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Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Posted: October 26th, 2017 | 3 Comments »

I’ve blogged before about the Swiss traveller and author Ella Maillart. Her book Forbidden Journey is a great read and recounts her seven month trip in 1935 from Peking to Turkestan (Xinjiang if you prefer) and beyond. It is of course a great companion to Peter Fleming’s One’s Company, his account of the same journey. Maillart got annoyed with Fleming for rushing along so at to get back to Scotland for the start of the Grouse Season, Fleming (who had no sense of smell or taste) ate anything and Maillart photographed everything. Indeed they neither fell into bed together nor shot each other but remarkably remained great friends. It’s rare you get two books about the same trip with contrasting impressions.

Maillart continued travelling. In 1937 she returned to Asia for Le Petit Parisien to report on Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, while in 1939 she undertook a trip from Geneva to Kabul by car, in the company of the Swiss writer, Annemarie Schwarzenbach. Schwarzenbach was a beguiling figure – a writer, traveller, adventurer, libertine and social experimenter who died far too young.

I recently came across a series of photographs of Schwarzenbach by Marianne Breslauer (here) – they are amazing and also offer some background to Schwarzenbach’s fascinating, but short, life. The collection includes this one of Maillart (right) and Schwarzenbach I had not seen before…


3 Comments on “Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach”

  1. 1 Matthias Nimke said at 11:43 pm on November 2nd, 2017:

    If you are interested in the work and the journeys of Annemarie Schwarzenbach there is a huge collection of sources like photographs, letters and so on in the Swiss Literary Archives:
    for example:
    https://www.nb.admin.ch/snl/en/home/latest-news/image-galleries/to-the-edge-of-the-world—homage-to-annemarie-schwarzenbach-to-.html
    http://ead.nb.admin.ch/web/as/as_voyages.html
    and here:
    http://ead.nb.admin.ch/html/schwarzenbach.html
    Best regards

  2. 2 Matthias Nimke said at 11:49 pm on November 2nd, 2017:

    … and about 3’477 photographs on the wikimedias commons website – the free media repository – publicised by the Swiss National Library:
    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:CH-NB-Annemarie_Schwarzenbach

  3. 3 Paul French said at 5:08 pm on November 3rd, 2017:

    many thanks Matthais


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